


keep in touch

by usingmyoxygen (keithsforeheadtattoo)



Category: Rent
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-02
Updated: 2010-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:18:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsforeheadtattoo/pseuds/usingmyoxygen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"i'm roger." the man says after a silence. "roger davis."</p><p>"mark cohen." he replies numbly. the blood on his shirt has crusted and turned a dark reddish brown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep in touch

**Author's Note:**

> whenever the origin stories of characters i like aren't already established, this typically means i have hundreds of my own explanations floating around my head.
> 
> so yeah.  
> here's one version of the first encounter of a certain bromance that's been ripening in my brain for a while. ahaha.
> 
> can be taken as slash or nay, depending on your preferences...

when mark first moves to alphabet city he is nineteen, filled with the promise of a fresh college dropout and living out of his car.

he's only lived there a couple of months before he meets roger. it's like fate or something. one of those weird coincidence kind of events caused by some hypothetical higher power that mark has only vague, halfhearted concepts of.

it's halloween and just as he's coming out of the cheapest liquor store that sells any semi-edible semblance of food in the area, mark gets jumped by a guy wearing a frankenstein mask. the first thing he remembers is hearing his bottle of vodka shatter against the sidewalk, and then the substantially more horrifying shattering noise of his nose breaking as frankenstein gives him a hard, steel-toed boot to the face. somewhere in between, he hits the ground, and somewhere before, he gets forcefully punched in the jaw and kneed pretty bad in the ribs, and somewhere after, it stops. over the pounding of blood in his ears and his own heavy breathing, mark can hear a man's voice cry out, indistinct but hostile and coated in obscenities. frankenstein tears off in the other direction with mark's car keys and his last thirty-seven bucks.

a couple thousand lifetimes pass. mark flinches as he hears footsteps approaching again, but then he's being helped to his feet and the guy sounds concerned, in an angry, roundabout way -- "jesus christ," he says as he's shifting himself to balance mark's weight, "'s'always nights like this that bring out all the crazy fuckers... you need help, man?"

mark protests that he can stand up by himself; even through a pair of glasses with fresh cracks like so many spiderwebs, he can still make out the other man's highly doubtful expression. mark leans up against a nearby lamppost, weakly, but he's trying to prove a point. no, he doesn't know what he's going to do without help, but he's in such a state of sudden embarrassment that his half-delirious mind starts to think that it's better for him to just stay here all night or break into his own car or something instead of having to admit he has no house.

"i gotta handful of quarters and there's a payphone right around the corner," the man offers, "i can call somebody for you..."

mark notices for the first time how badly fucked he really is. his nose is gushing blood in thick, dark streams all the way down the front of his shirt and he feels like he could throw up and everything sounds like it's under water.

he can't think of anything to say. he can't think of anything at all except that it's hard to breathe and he's going to have to buy new glasses now and he certainly doesn't have the money -- oh god, he doesn't have any money, he doesn't have _any_ money...

"...anybody?" the man prompts in tones of attempted calm that come out more frantic than anything else. "anybody i can call and tell them--well, here, what's your name? i can call 911 or something and then later w--"

"no!" mark is suddenly forceful. "really. thanks. i'm telling you. i'm fine." he finishes heatedly, turns around to leave, and promptly passes out.

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

for the first time in too-goddamn-long, mark wakes up in a bed, and for the first time in about a year, it's somebody else's. somebody else's that he doesn't recognize.

he sits up with his head throbbing and feels for his glasses -- all he finds is a piece of paper on the nightstand. mark has to hold it ridiculously close to his face in order to read it.

it's simple but orienting:

_phone + food in kitchen_  
no health coverage + i'm basically broke so i couldn't take you to the hospital - sorry  
nose looks like a clean break. don't touch it + you'll be ok 

and then underneath the bulk of the information, in similar but even sloppier scrawl as though added on in a hurry:

_glasses on the counter  
i'm gone til 12_

mark gives a little smile and heads out to the kitchen only to find the man seated on the counter, right next to his still-smashed glasses. mark spots a clock on the opposite wall -- 12:36. god damn.

hearing mark come in, the man turns around, looking up from yesterday's newspaper.

"hey." he says with a tone so casual that it wouldn't suggest he was greeting the stranger he'd saved from possible lethal injury only one night before. "uhh, you need to call anybody?"

mark thinks about it. "well, i..." might as well tell him. there's no use lying about it at this point.

"i don't, uh... i don't have anybody to call. i moved here a couple months ago, from the village... just dropped out of NYU and i live in my car. ...lived. i lived in my car but then last night that asshole swiped my keys."

"...jesus."

mark clambers up onto the opposite end of the counter, noticing with a wince that he's still wearing the same clothes he was last night, then realizing with fresh horror that all his other clothes were - ugh - in his _car_...

"i'm roger." the man says after a silence. "roger davis."

"mark cohen." he replies numbly. the blood on his shirt has crusted and turned a dark reddish brown. ewwww.

roger stares him down analytically for a long time, then eases himself back into his newspaper.

"y'know, i have this friend who's a doctor." he's instantly casual again, speaking without looking up from the text. "he's coming into town in two days or something. he could check you out, i bet. for free."

mark has no idea where he'll be in two days. he states this openly, visions of public housing flashing through his imagination.

roger lowers his newspaper again.

"listen." he begins, getting almost businesslike, "i don't know if you're weird or a total dick or anything, but i figure the least i can do for a guy putting up with the kind of shit you're dealing with is let him stay at my place. so." he shrugs as if this completely takes care of the matter and then hops off the counter to go rifle through the fridge.

mark finds himself caught without words yet again.

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

roger's doctor friend doesn't come down to new york for a week and a half, but despite the "hey man, where are you?"-style voicemails he's heard roger leaving on somebody's machine every few days, there is nothing directly said about it. mark just stays the whole time, looking through local ads for easy jobs and cheap forms of transportation.

by the time the doctor guy comes around, mark's mowed enough lawns and given insulin shots to enough old ladies' cats to make a semi-respectable amount of money, but hasn't found any real work. he's bought a bike, though, and another shirt, and his black eyes have both healed to the point of relative normalcy.

as it turns out, roger's earlier diagnosis was pretty spot-on -- his nose was a "surprisingly" (says the doctor-friend) clean break, so it would heal if he took shitloads of aspirin and kept his head elevated when he slept and didn't bump into anything (which, without glasses, mark wasn't sure he could really promise.)

the day of his brief but fruitful examination, mark packs his belongings (the old shirt, some assorted foods and a bottle of jack daniel's) into a grocery bag and leaves while roger is still out playing some gig -- he's a musician, mark's learned, but he's never gotten to hear him play anything.

when roger gets home there is no trace of mark aside from a note on the counter. _thanks for everything_ , it says in a loopy scrawl, and then at the bottom of the paper, structured similarly to his first note to mark: _holiday inn down the street. keep in touch?_


End file.
